[Sunspots] The scarcity edition

“The Shakespeare quote is so powerful it bears repeating: ‘Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we might oft win, by fearing to attempt!’ Entrepreneurship is very, very, very emotional. The emotional rollercoaster is such a substantial part of the entrepreneurship. I haven’t seen any entrepreneurship textbooks address this extremely important issue. If you’re doing anything you’re actually passionate about, this is a necessary requirement. You have really high highs, and really low lows.”

“For most of human history, there was little chance of overdosing on information, because any one day in the Olduvai Gorge was a lot like any other. Today, though, we can find in the course of a few hours online more information than our ancient ancestors could in their whole lives. Just like the laser and the cat, technology is playing a trick on us. We are programmed for scarcity and can’t dial back when something is abundant.” [via GE]

”#1 thing they focus on is company culture. Managers jobs are to inspire the Zappos culture. Empower people to make the right decisions for the company and customer — the reps make their own decisions. Have 5-weeks of training on company culture, taking calls from customers, and working in the warehouse. Then they start the job they were hired for. Put out a culture book, written by every employee, about what the Zappos culture means to them. HR does interviews for culture fit (a second round). This keeps the company culture, even makes it better.” (Another recap)

“This afternoon I attended Jason Fried’s presentation on ‘Stuff We’ve Learned at 37signals’...As a company I’ve long respected, it was interested to hear him discuss some of the things he’s learned developing 37signals.” (Another recap)

“Here’s what I learned: If you want to set up your iPhone as a prepaid account, do not—no that’s not emphatic enough — do NOT, DO NOT attempt to set up the account in advance with AT&T. Just don’t. Trust me. Here’s how you should do it…”

“I’ve found that much of the best software is the best because the programmers are the users, too. It is UsWare. It behooves software developers to understand users, to walk a mile in their shoes. If we can bridge the gap between users and ourselves—even if only a little—we start slowly converting our mediocre ThemWare into vastly superior UsWare. To really care about the software you’re writing, you have to become a user, at least in spirit.”

”’Work smarter, not harder’ is one of the ultimate clichés. Like most clichés, few people actually do it. The busy outnumber the productive by a wide margin. Whether you’re a boss, an employee, or working for yourself, we’ve all had our treadmilling moments. Here’s the difference, from a geek perspective.”

“I don’t do things differently to be different; I do what works for me,’ she says. ‘To me, the commodity that we consistently overvalue is money, and what we undervalue is our precious and irreplaceable time…Theoretically, I could choose to trade artistic autonomy and pride in my work for increased income — say, by broadly licensing my characters to be used for television…I love what I do, I love the people I work with, I care very much about the value of the work I create, and I don’t need more money than I have. This is not revolutionary philosophy. It’s just common sense.”

“Time is the scarcest resource and unless it is managed nothing else can be managed.” – Peter Drucker

Martial

on 16 Mar 08

Who “overdoses” on information? Please exlain how our shiny modern gobs of information differ from those dusty drabs of ancient information? How exactly would one measure the amount of information our intrepid reporter takes in through his web-surfing while sitting at his desk and compare it to the amount a stone age person takes in as he walks through his life-sustaining yet potentially lethal environment?

Fine, we’re programmed, if you will, to take in information – and I agree that it is interesting to learn stuff about that. But this idea that somehow we living here and now have “more” and that it poses problems like “overdosing” is ludicrous. The environment is not the problem. How we choose to interact with it can be – especially if we have so little self-control that we have to check a website every day, sometimes two or three times (I can stop whenever I like!).